Speaking of which, the timid ghost was waiting for us outside of the lobby when we rolled up. She glided straight through the back door of the car without hesitation. Some ghosts picked up on the odd phasing thing quickly while others, often children, took some work.
I withdrew the directions I’d gotten out of my back pocket and read them aloud as Michael weaved his way back onto the main road, though Marianne’s hovering above the seat behind me was awfully distracting.
Around twenty minutes later, we arrived at the orphanage—a large, four-story brownstone building settled on its own few acres of land outside of the city. There had been light rain earlier, so the ground was slick and the children weren’t out in the playground out front. We drove into the parking lot around the left side of the building and got out. The plan was simple—we’d be interviewing Jameson pretending to be novelists while Marianne completed her final wish. It sounded a little creepy, but then again my job involved helping ghosts, so that was a given.
Thankfully, even with the disturbing deception, everything went smoothly and we helped her cross over. Still, I couldn’t help feeling bad for Jameson, because he would never know how she felt about him.
“You okay?” Michael asked after we were both back in the car, strapping in for the ride back into town.
“Yeah, I just…” I took a deep breath. “It’s a shame he didn’t get to find out she was in love with him. It sounds like she carried it with her for a long time. I wish she had been able to tell him before she died.”
He nodded, starting the engine. “Unprofessed feelings tend to eat at the soul. It’s not healthy.”
“Yeah. People really should just say how they feel.”
Our eyes met. Silence spilled between us for a paralyzing few seconds before I cleared my throat and grabbed the directions from inside the glove compartment.
“Right. Let’s get the hell out of here,” I muttered, mentally chiding myself for letting such a stupid thing out of my mouth. Just as I retrieved the directions, the picture frame of my mother tumbled to the floorboard. As I scooped it up, my fingertips brushed against something bulky and rectangular in the back of the frame. What the hell?
I put the papers down and flipped the frame around, running my hands over the back until I found a thin seam at the bottom, so thin that I could only squeeze two fingers inside. When I pulled, a small leather-bound notebook no larger than the palm of my hand slid out.
“What is it?” Michael asked as I flipped it open. Inside, there was curly cursive writing on small sheets of tablet paper in Castilian Spanish, my mother’s native language so it was only natural she would write in Spanish.
“I think it’s a diary.”
Michael leaned across the seat to see. “Your mother’s? What’s the date?”
I read the date at the top, though it took me a moment. She had taught me Spanish and English as a child, but I rarely spoke it so I was a bit rusty. “If this is right, then it’s after they took her to the psychiatric hospital.”
I turned more pages, finding that entry after entry, starting from the day they brought her in to the day the file said she died. A thrill went through me. This is what I had been searching for all this time. Answers.
Chapter 21
August 5th, 1993
I am no fool.
I know why I have been brought here. They can pretend all they want that they want to help me, to heal me, to save me from myself, but I can see right through their lies. I was only able to procure these bits of paper from them because they hope I will willingly divulge my innermost thoughts to them. Each night, I take one sheet and hide it for safekeeping. Thus far, they have not caught on. I am not sure if I will be able to keep my writings safe from them forever, but I have learned that there is always hope even in the darkness.
I don’t know where to start. I am writing merely to keep myself sane. I don’t expect to be able to see my precious Jordan again, but should you ever find this, my daughter, know that I love you more than anything in the world. I had hoped to explain these things to you when you were older, but I fear I will be gone before you grow up and so I will divulge them here.